Overview

Gun control has been debated for decades. As more shooting incidents occurred recent years, voices calling for the government to enact new gun regulations to restrict citizens’ purchasing of weapons are increasing. As in 2017, 400 people were killed and 1644 people got injured in shooting incidents. Below is a reactive map on which all shooting incidents occurred in 2017 are marked.

Note:
Each circle on the above map represents a collection of incidents. The larger the collection is, the closer the circle color is to orange, farther to green. Click the circle and the incidents separate. Each pushpin represents an incident. Notice that pushpins have different colors. If we regard each injury as one tenth death, then we can calculate the “magnitude” of each incident. If the magnitude is small, the pushpin color is green. Medium, orange. Serious, Red(e.g., Las Vegas mass shooting). Click the cross mark on a pushpin, a window will pop up showing the date, city, state, injured people and killed people of the incident.

Shootings By State

First, let’s have a look at the state casualty ranking.

state casualty
Nevada 500
Illinois 165
California 153
Texas 142
Florida 113
Ohio 103
Tennessee 66
New York 60
Virginia 58
Pennsylvania 55
Louisiana 51
New Jersey 50
Mississippi 49
Missouri 48
Arkansas 37
South Carolina 37
Alabama 35
Georgia 34
Maryland 34
Indiana 30
North Carolina 28
Michigan 25
District of Columbia 24
Kentucky 24
Arizona 20
Kansas 19
Minnesota 13
New Mexico 11
Washington 10
Iowa 9
Wisconsin 9
Maine 5
Montana 5
Oklahoma 5
Utah 5
Colorado 4
Connecticut 4
Delaware 4

Formula:
casualty = killed + injured

Note:
The above table shows each state’s casualties in shooting incidents in descending order.

From the table, we know that Nevada, Illinois, California, Texas, Florida, Ohio are the states where more than 100 people got killed or injured in shootings. After seeing the ranking table, what about the percentages of each state? Below is a pie chart showing the percentages of the top 5 states and that of all other states combined.

Using numbers to compare shootings among states may seem abstract for the viewers. However, with a pie chart, it is clear which states have the most casualties and what percentages they make up of the entire nation.

Specifically, it is really easy to see that the shooting casualties of the top 5 states( Nevada, Illinois, California, Texas, Florida) make up 52.5% of that of the entire nation. Also, the casualties of the first state, Nevada is about 3 times that of the second state, Illinois.

If we dig into the pie chart above, we may find a “correlation” between the strict-ness of a state’s gun regulations and the casualties it got in shooting incidents. From the chart above, we know that Nevada has the most casualties of 500 people. It is known that Nevada has some of the most relaxed gun laws in the US. Gun laws in Nevada can be found here.

In contrast, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware are states where least people were killed in shootings. Also, these are states with the strictest gun regulations.

In this sense, there seems to be a correlation between the strict-ness of a state’s gun law and the casulaty rate in that state. Generally, the stricter the gun law, the lower the casualty rate.

Shootings By Month

Let’s have a look at the casualties by each month. We want to see which month has the most casualties and why.

From the above bar plot, it is clear that Oct is the month where most people lost their lives(86 lives). And it is due to the mass shooting occurred in Las Vegas.

Mass Shooting Incident

On October 1, 2017, the deadliest mass shooting was committed by an individual in the United States. That night, gunman Stephen Paddock opened fire on a crowd of concertgoers at music festival on the Las Vegas Strip in Nevada In this incident, 59 people lost their life. An additional 441 people were injured. In the aftermath, many victims were sent to area hospitals. More information can be found on Wikipedia, BBC News and New York Times.